Overwatch Summer Games Breakdown

It’s been almost 24 hours since the games launched, and I’ve spent just about every waking minute playing before I got dragged back to write this. Much of that time has been put towards the old fan-favorite Lucioball, which has returned better than ever. Last year, Lucio’s ultimate ability allowed for some unfair strategies, such as standing in the enemy net and pulling the ball towards you. This time, you’re given infinite boop and increased speed for the duration of the event. Making it’s debut this year is competitive Lucioball, ranked like competitive play, and will award you with a spray for completing your placement matches and another spray for finishing in the top 500. The event also brought back total mayhem, which disappeared for a few weeks when Doomfist was released, but has fortunately made a return.

Speaking of returning goodies, every skin, spray, emote, voice line, and victory pose from last year’s event has made a return, and seels for the price of a normal skin. If you missed anything last year, or didn’t get the game until after the event like me, now’s your chance to complete your collection. Of course, Blizzard isn’t skimping out on anything, so we have a full suite of new cosmetics. Although last year’s were sport themed, as they were centered around the Olympics, we have a new collection of beach skins, such as sunbathing Widowmaker, lifeguard McCree, swimsuit Sombra; and say hallelujah because our prayers have been answered, we have beach dad 76:

Much like the last two events, each and every character now has a total of two event voicelines, such as Pharah’s reference to Friday Night Lights and Zarya’s “it’s only a game, why do you have to be mad?”. With cosmetics both new and old, it would normally warrant another complaint ranting about how difficult it is to get the items, but Blizzard’s recently fixed that issue. For the last few weeks, loot boxes have been significantly less likely to give repeats, and much more likely to give credits, meaning that even first time summer gamers like me have a chance for the full collection.